The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend
| The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend | |
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| Category: General Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: The second Adrian Mole lives up to the promise of the first and points up Sue Townsend as one of our foremost comic writers. Highly recommended. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 352 | Date: January 2012 |
| Publisher: Penguin | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-0141046433 | |
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The country might be at war over the Falklands but life is hardly straight-forward in the Mole household. Adrian's parents are back together after both had disastrous affairs and it's not long before Adrian is shocked to learn that his mother is pregnant. He's equally shocked to see his father helping Doreen (a.k.a. the 'stick insect') along a path which isn't particularly slippy, although he does notice that she seems to have put on quite a bit of weight. Pandora Braithwaite is as fickle, but adorable, as ever and Adrian's hormones are still playing hop-scotch with his brain. So, what's new?
Well, Adrian's a couple of years older than when we first met him but he's still not lost that edge of trusting innocence and belief in his own intellectual genius despite the lack of recognition it achieves from outside sources. Bert, the old age pensioner, is getting older but is past the stage where he's getting any wiser. There's been a switch- round of characters, but somehow they all seem to have ended up back in roughly the same place. Yes - it's just like square dancing - and life.
What isn't like life (or square dancing) is that you will be in the mind of a fifteen-year-old boy - you'll never doubt that for a moment - but every word is gloriously witty and well-thought-out. You'll laugh - but never in an unkind way - at what Adrian says and just occasionally you will realise that he's hit on a fundamental truth which makes you think about something in a new way. It's humour at its very best - insightful and never unkind.
I doubted that The Growing Pains... could live up to the original but I've been pleasantly surprised to find that this book builds on the first rather than taking advantage of its success. It confirms Sue Townsend as one of our foremost comic writers. I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy of the book to the Bookbag.
You could read this as a standalone, but you'll get far more out of it if you read it after The Secret Diary. we can also recommend Bob Servant: Hero of Dundee by Bob Servant and Neil Forsyth
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